


Weapon of the Times - II

by starkraving



Series: Weapon of The Times [2]
Category: Halo, Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 13:26:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkraving/pseuds/starkraving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Remember that it was a time of war, that you were made for war, that you were made exceptionally well for war. But, if nothing else remember this: They lied to you. They cannot teach you of war. There is a solider with a cat on his shoulder and battle rifle in his hands. And there is blood in the street and beneath your boots and this is what they say you are made for.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Deploy

Skopje.

A UEG Inner Colony. Outer Epsilon Eridani system. Population: 2.3 million persons.  The first time you hear the name it’s in the same sentence telling you that a Covenant ship, only eight hours prior, unleashed a full scale plasma bombardment from orbit, glassed the whole colony and what remained of its populace. The plasma ordinance, they tell you, obliterated the 90% of the colony’s total metropolitan and urban zones in a series of semi-nuclear strikes. Plasma weaponry is not nuclear, but it’s the only weapon humanity’s history has to compare.

First impact vaporized an inland-sea, and set the sky on fire. Then it choked half the atmosphere with lechatelierite dust and magnetized ash – scorching the earth as the fucking stratosphere began to boil off the planet’s skin.

They tell you they have a mission for you.

_“We’re deploying you to assist with combat operations on Tribute.”_

Tribute. Also a UEG Inner Colony, same system, tier 3 planet. Capital city: Casbah, Population: 2.5 million.

_“You will be assigned to a platoon in outer Casbah under the direct command of that unit Captain who will provide you direction as needed, but as the fighting is heavy on Tribute I do not imagine you will be tasked with much beyond leveling the playing field between their troops and a raider class unit of Storm Elites that is currently sabotaging supply lines. You mission directive is shared by all UNSC forces currently: eliminate the raiders and help the UNSC forces secure the supply lines on Tribute.”_

_That all?_

Ellis is the only one who registers your MJOLNIR HUD short-hand on the short-wave band and therefore the only one who smirks a little when you nod your understanding.

_“As you know, ONI-II has cleared the public release of information pertaining to the SPARTAN-II program to bolster UNSC morale. In the spirit of Directive 930 and the mandate to activate all serviceable SPARTANs to field duty, you are being deployed as a high-level military asset to aid with military objectives that do not require the attention of full SPARTAN squads. You will be maintaining the identities of fallen SPARTANs.”_

_Fallen SPARTANs?_

_“Yes. You’re at Level Zero now. Your active service tag is now 000. You will not run under your original service tag or your service tag actual. Caleb-024 died February 2 nd of 2545. The existence of SPARTAN-000 is at Level Zero. You will be running under the name Arthur-079. Arthur was confirmed KIA and listed as MIA in the year 2544 in accordance with ONI Directive 930.”_

_Solo? Cannot multi._

_“Pardon?”_

_SPARTANs – Tribute?_

_“Oh. No SPARTAN teams have been assigned to this planet. You are not to engage with any SPARTANs if circumstances arise that put you in contact with others. If you must engage, however, your Level Zero directive and command codes will ensure they do not interfere with you. No rank and file UNSC soldiers know what Arthur-079 looked like or his history. They will only have access to his public service record. You will be briefed on his full service record.”_

_Fun._

_“I very much doubt it will be. You are being deployed into a live-fire zone. Do you understand your directive, SPARTAN-000?”_

_Yes._

_“Any commander looking to supersede your clearance must provide Level Zero security codes. Only an ONI-III Level Zero project or military commander can gain access to your full service record – in all other instances you are to run under your assigned service-tag. Again, you are not to engage directly with other SPARTANs unless the situation is of utmost urgency. Understood?”_

_Got it._

_“You always do.”_

“You know,” says technician Hart, eyeing Ellis and you with annoyance. “That gets pretty old, pretty quick.”

“Sorry,” you say, aloud this time and Hart grimaces.

“And I forget how much it hurts to hear you talk.”

_“SPARTAN-000 is perfectly capable of understanding regular speech and since the implementation of the HUD shorthand program to the MOLJIR, I believe that any difficulties in communication will be overcome, PFC Hart.”_

“I know,” says Hart, doing a last check on your bio-metrics and stat-feeds from the suit. She’s got her helmet off. Her hair knotted at the back of her head. Her eyes are blue and she has freckles that run across the bridge of her nose and mottle the skin across her cheekbones. Her two front teeth are a little crooked. You know because she bites her lower lip when she is focusing and she is doing so now. “After this, I probably won’t see you again... for a long time at least. Once you’re deployed in the field you will belong to ONI-III command. It’s unlikely they will have you report in to our facilities again. We’re the research division so…”

“Thanks.”

She blinks. “For –? What have I –?”

“ _For being kind, obviously,”_ says Ellis, as though Hart has just incorrectly spelled Mississippi.

You shrug, but Hart smiles.

“Well, Zero,” she says, using your new designation with a slight shake in her breath. “You’re welcome.” She seems like she intends to leave it there so you disconnect the neural-jack from the back of your helmet and set the medical-input aside to end the briefing and equipment check. Hart touches your arm – the small starfish of her fingers spread against the under-mesh at your inner elbow. She says, “Be safe. You’re not like other SPARTANs. You don’t have a team that’s like you. You don’t even have an AI to help with the aphasia…”

“It’s fine.”

 _“None can be cleared for an undead SPARTAN,”_ says Ellis, who enjoys calling you that for some reason. _“Maybe if he survives enough missions.”_

“He’ll survive,” says Hart.

You look at her, questioningly.

“You’re hard to kill. I almost feel bad for them, you know?”

“Don’t,” you say.

“I said ‘almost’. Did Ellis mention this will be an orbital hard-drop insertion?”

You glare at Ellis.

“ _I was getting to that. As I said, you are deploying into a live-fire zone and we cannot clear a low-altitude LZ. You are trained for this.”_

You glare at Ellis.

_“I cannot see your face, but I suspect you are not happy.”_

You glare at Ellis.

_“If it’s any consolation whatsoever, it is unlikely they will have any anti-aircraft weaponry capable of targeting a single drop pod.”_

“Thanks,”you say, but what you really mean is you hate heights. 

***

It’s not that you’re scared of heights it’s just that gravity is a force not generally to be fucked with and when you’re strapped inside an orbital drop-pod (otherwise known as the one-ton-coffin, otherwise known as the Egg) being fired at Mach-4 straight at the surface of planet… gravity becomes the one and only force in your life that concerns you for the sixty seconds that you rocket toward the ground.

SOEIV stands for Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle and there’s decades of data to back your concerns that A: you may be shot out of the sky B: the ceramic skin of your Egg may fail and bake you alive in the kiln of your pod C: the drag-panels will not deploy, causing you to slam into the planet at terminal velocity D: the braking rockets may not deploy, causing you to slam into the planet at terminal velocity.

Basically, you don’t want to slam into the planet at terminal velocity.

It’s fondly, Ellis says, called ‘digging your own grave’.

He tells you this as you’re climbing into your SOEIV and jamming the MA5 into one of the equipment racks between your feet. You glare at Ellis one last time before the pod closes and seals you into the crash seat. You have long enough there in the claustrophobic confines of the pod to wonder if you’re ever going to see Ellis again – if you’re going to see any of this crew again – and then, kick starting your heart, the thirty second countdown queues up on one of the video screens at your right.

The whole pod jars in its rig, the bottom of the heavy 18 by 9 foot titanium box rattles as the belly of the ship opens up, the pod descending down into the dark tunnel of the airlock launch chute. Over your head, blast doors seal and then, beyond the clear triple-density vertical viewing panel that makes up the front of your pod, the belly of the ship splits open and the earth-glow of Tribute lights up the inside of your pod.

 _“Prepare for deployment,”_ says Ellis.

You flip off no one in particular, just kind of hoping that the ship’s AI can see you.

_“Good luck, SPARTAN-000.”_

The count hits zero and your single pod is jettisoned into the waiting vacuum. This part is smooth, the bottom of your belly jumps to the back of your throat but there’s no resistance as the small metal pod slices a long trajectory down. Your hands on the rudimentary controls – a pair of manual joysticks – are tight. The auto-pilot should have calculated the angle of your descent for you. The screen to your left at eye-level shows a live-feed of the planet rising toward you, a hovering green light fixed on a fleck of the horizon that is your target destination – a strategic insertion point that will put you directly at the top of a ridge overlooking a live Covenant-human combat zone. Theoretically, from this superior position, you’re to gun down the Elites and help drive back the hostile forces before they manage to destroy yet another supply line out of the capital.

This is all well and good – a very neat little plan

Then you hit atmo and the whole pod jars suddenly, jerking you in your harness as the pod hits resistance, the air around the planet screaming past until the friction of the stratosphere against the outside of the Egg begins to super-heat the alloy and you watch the outside of the pod seemingly catch ablaze. Inside your armor, the temperature does not spike too terribly but your readouts tell you it’s getting hot inside the pod. The re-entry skins the outside of its ceramic outer paint, burning it away completely as the pod breaks through the atmosphere into lower altitudes.

Your whole body is vibrating, not quite violently enough to rattle your teeth in your skull, but close.

Below you, the face of Tribute races up to meet you, the south-east of the city for which you are aiming is blinking now on the targeting display, calculating an uninterrupted entry into the drop point. You remember to breathe. There is a deafening BANG as the upper exterior panels of the SOEIV blow open, the sudden surface area catching a massive scoop of wind-resistance and acting as a chute to take your fall-speed from terminal to mostly-terminal. You’re still at 2,000 feet.

You’re at 1000 feet when you see the anti-aircraft fire that strafes up from the overpass your pod is aimed at. Covenant troops have, in the time since your pod was fired from its launch-chute to the time you hit 1000 feet, taken control of your LZ. They have turrets. You decide, as you disengage auto-pilot and switch to manual controls, that this drop is not going to end as smoothly as you might have hoped for your first deployment. You have time to think that just before a volley _slams_ into the side of your Egg, smashing it off course and hurling the little ship on a frenetic trajectory far west of your original LZ.

Inside the pod, you yank the controls hard to port and the rockets engage, leveling out the sharp arc of your descent into a slower, gentler curve at Mach-2. The metropolitan sprawl of an urban district races up toward side of your pod at a viciously wrong angle. This beast should be hitting earth feet-first. You’re at 700 feet wrong angle. You hit the stabilizers again. 500 feet wrong angle. You blow the left side exterior panel trying to bring the nose up. The inside of the SOEIV is flashing red – _Warning! Angle of descent beyond safety parameters. Correct angle of descent_. 300 feet wrong angle. _Cmon!_ The side of a building fills the whole viewing panel, screaming up to meet you and you think, very clearly almost calmly, that you might die here. 100 feet to impact. 10 feet to –

The impact is extreme.

The titanium cage of the Egg punches through the cement parking structure, knocks a hole through three stories of parked cars – _bam, bam, bam!_ – each level slamming through you, jarring you against the safety harness, your head snapping back against the crash seat. The viewing panel fractures, blows inward, spraying you with rock and glass and dust that would shred apart anything but MJOLNIR armor and break any bone but a carbine ossified skeleton. That doesn’t mean it feels great. The pod slams to a blind stop in the middle of the parking structure, jamming up against a support pillar and the floor where, unfathomably, everything stops and goes quiet. Hanging – face down, blast doors mostly buried, the pod laying sideways wedged in a pile of rubble – you think that could have gone a lot better.

You’re a full kilometer off target and behind Covenant lines.

You’re very sure they saw where your pod went down, though, it’s possible they don’t suspect the contents of a single SOEIV. Whether they suspect it contains an enemy combatant or ordinance meant to help the UNSC groundtroops, you don’t want to be neatly boxed up for them when they show up for salvage. You unstrap yourself from the crash seat, fall forward onto the blast door. It’s almost completely dark inside the pod, but you can see just fine. You pull your MA5 off the floor, crouch in the middle of the blast door and pull the release at the top of the frame.

It’s designed to blow out the blast door from the pod, not blow the rest of the extremely heavy pod off the door. So it doesn’t really work so well. The door hisses and kicks in its frame, but it doesn’t deploy from its housings, so you’re stuck under a one ton cube of titanium. Great. You put down the MA5 and get on your feet, standing up inside the Egg so you can set your hands against the back of the pod behind your crash seat and push _up._ The pod weighs, qualitatively, a fuck-ton.

It’s been determined that even with two years in cryo that you’re strong enough to lift twice your considerable weight without the armor. With the armor, which you have not had the occasion to use in any situation outside the war room, you’re about to find out because you’re pretty sure one drop pod weighs, actually, about 2000 pounds so you’re about to find out if you can lift that or you’re going to die. Breathe. Breathe again. Grit your teeth and you heave up, drive the full force of your armor and every ounce of your strength straight up and –

The pod bucks up off the ground, the frame separating from the door and hovering about three feet off the ground – as high as you can manage while standing, arms fully extended up, inside the damn thing – and when you set it down this time there is a crack of space between the frame and the ground wide enough to fit your hands. You put your MA5 on your back, the mag-clamp snapping it to the spine of your armor and crouch, digging your hands under the lip of the frame and heaving up, stepping under, then letting the pod fall hard enough to shatter some of the concrete beneath it.

Great. You didn’t let your damn pod kill you.

You’re off to a good start.

That’s about the moment that a three-man squad of Storm Elites come thundering up from the level below. In person, a seven foot, 450 pound, raptor-skinned, biped on massive digi-grade legs, and in full body armor… is actually more intimidating than their species description in training, which was intimidating to begin with. They spot you immediately, their massive heads swinging your way, quadruple hinged mandibles flaring open, baring dark mouths lined with teeth.

They open fire. Luckily, you have your pod for cover, which is good because about two-hundred needler and plasma rounds ricochet of the side of it as you take cover. You can hear them shouting in their own language and a quick glance tells you one of them is laying down suppressing fire to hold you down behind the Egg while the other two move to flank.

But you have an MA5C Assault Rifle.

The first live combat round you ever fire slams into the first Sangheili’s gut, the second in his chest, and the third blows out the back of his skull as his shields go down. Your cover takes a spray of needler fire which you ignore in favor of putting down the one with sniper rifle on his back. You don’t want the long-range precision gunner of the group to stick around, you see. You drop back to one knee behind the pod. You have twenty-nine rounds left, five spare mags, half a dozen hand grenades, and your pistol. The hammer of live rounds against the side of the pod is deafening.

Now.

You stand up just in time for the second Elite to decide he’s not going to let you snipe him. He’s already charging across the twenty meter gap between you, hurdles the drop pod and tries to put an energy sword through your guts… but that’s eons too slow. You put five rounds into his belly as he leaps, three of which punch through his shields, his armor, and his spine resulting in a very heavy Sangheili corpse landing on top of you. For reference, a fully armored dead Sangheili weighs about 900 pounds, so it’s 900 pounds of dead alien lying on top of you as you struggle to elbow this not-insignificant weight off the top of you before the last giant alien realizes you’re stuck and comes to shoot your head off while you’re pinned.

“ _Animal_!” Oh, the alien has swapped to English for you. You redouble your efforts kicking the corpse of his buddy off, your MA5 still at the ready, one handed against your shoulder as you shove and lever the giant dead Elite off your right leg. “I will flay you from your battle skin, beast! I will pull your _guts_ out through your throat!”

That seems ambitious. It’s pretty hard to get through MJOLNIR armor even post-mortem. You finish prying your way out from under the Elite and take a moment to grab the steaming energy sword he left on the ground. It take you about a second to get the weight of it, gauge it… then you stand up again and _hurl_ that fucking sword at the chatty third alien, prongs-first just as he opens fire on you. The plasma round glances off your chest armor and knocks you back a step out of your follow-through. Sends your goddamn MA5 spinning from your hands.

The good – the Elite has a sword through the meat of his right shoulder.

The bad – he’s not dead and point of fact he’s charging you now, yanking the sword out of his own shoulder and barreling at you, bellowing psychotically and you don’t have your primary weapon now. Your first fire fight is going about as good as your first orbital drop. Luckily, you still have your loadout of proximity frags. Pull the pin on a grenade and baseball huck it so hard that, if it didn’t explode on contact – which it does, _spectacularly_ – it might have very well busted something important in the alien’s jaw.

Instead, there’s just an impressive amount of blue blood dripping from the ceiling.

Do not take the moment to survey the carnage you’re responsible for. You’re too busy retrieving your MA5 and rifling through the Elites’ armor for anything useable. The sword is usable, there’s a kind of data-pad with a map, and the energy rifles are usable. Type-55’s you think. You fire off a couple shots to see how they handle, end up deciding you like the heft and weight of the plasma rifle better than the MA5 for now and leave your rifle mag-clamped to your back while you pull up a your planetary coordinates on your HUD. The neural interface makes this extremely fast – the relay from your head to the armor’s systems quicker than any verbal command.

Activate the Covenant data pad again, cross reference the high-lighted coordinates with the overlay on your HUD. Most of the points line up with UNSC supply depots, the other points though… The sound of gunfire penetrates the narrow sphere of your thoughts, snapping the rest of the world back into focus. You shut the map and queue up a location tag. There’s UNSC radio chatter on military channels – non-secure for the most part, partial short-range transmissions cut with static and the occasional code-call for ordinance. There’s enough chatter to tell you that squad they deployed you to defend is still alive, but for how much longer is pretty unclear.

Get to the combat zone, help clear the hostiles, rally with the UNSC.

This is the new plan.

It’s a full kilometer to the fight. Luckily, you can flat out sprint at 34 mph for four minutes straight without your armor; in your armor, you can go about 50mph. (You won’t though, because, again, your reflexes.) Unluckily, the urban sprawl between you and the Marines you’re supposed to be helping is no longer a neat series of grids and roadways, but rather a labyrinth of fallen buildings. The streets are clogged with abandoned cars, crashed aircraft, and cratered by orbital shells. It’s going to be a high-speed obstacle course and, again, you’re reaction speeds are not in the 90th percentile.

You open a channel and move to the edge of the parking level you’re on. Peer over the edge.

“–are taking heavy fire!” says the man on the radio. “I repeat! We are taking heavy fire and require assistance.”

You’re about four stories up. You say, _“Ordinance inbound.”_

“Say again? This is a non-secure channel.”

_“Ordinance. In. Bound.”_

“Negative. Ordinance drop-pod was knocked off course. Who is this?”

“ _Hold position.”_

“What? Who the fuck are you? We need back up –” There’s an explosion. “Fuck! Fuck, Jesus Christ, we’re dying! They have a fucking Wraith! We are not equipped for mobile artillery! I repeat! We are not equipped. Send another drop pod or –!”

You jump from the building and dead drop onto a parked car which crumples like a soda can beneath your weight, your boots buckling the roof as you jump out of the wreck and land in the street. You’re behind enemy lines here so in the time it takes you to hit the pavement, in the rest between one beat of your heart and the next, the force boosters in your armor kick on. You exhale. You are gone. You go from zero to 30mph in about five seconds flat and it’s _easy._ You could go faster, but it’s just ten seconds before you hit a wall and have to change direction, skidding and hooking to your right, taking off down a narrow ally where you kick off the ground, leap a parked truck and hit the other side of the alley in a roll and keep running.

You breathe. Your HUD clocks your speed at 40mph, the buildings and the street signs, the craters, the bodies, the tanks, and the fires – the battle ground of the capital city whipping by in long snap shots. Someone fires at you. A needler round takes out a store window in front as you rocket past. You run faster, veer hard right, duck, take off left – zig-zagging an erratic trajectory around the empty lanes of the street. Four more shots take out chunks of pavement near your feet, you duck a plasma round, hurdle a fallen car and plow through the front door of an office building, sprinting through the foyer at 40mph. Burst through the doors at the other side of the building.

You can see the over-pass and the gun-turrets that shot you down.

You admit, you can hold a grudge.

You hit their barricade still going about 40mph and put a Sangheili energy sword through the gunner’s skull, shearing his head off and kicking the corpse ten meters down the bridge, a spray of blue and gray spattering the pavement. You immediately take control of the turret and turn its impressive, drop-pod-killing plasma rounds on three shield-carrying Covenant soldiers working their way toward the UNSC barricades. The turret rounds hit with enough force to blow their ribcages completely apart. With their advance team pulped, it doesn’t take the rest of them very long to realize their turret gunner is dead. You stick a grenade to the underside of the turret, pull your MA5, hop over the guard rail of the over pass and land on top of another Storm Elite, who gets a skull-full of bullets right before your boots plow the corpse to the ground.

The screaming follows immediately.

You open fire on the two Sangheili in a Wraith, instantly killing the gunner. It takes the driver a moment to realize what’s happened and by then you’re charging the cumbersome tank. You leap straight up, land on top of the gunner roost and slide down the back of the tank, slapping a sticky grenade into the rotating cylinder exhaust port at the back of the vehicle. Then you hit the ground and take off running. You get about thirty meters before the explosion blows open the back of the tank, disabling its power supply and crippling the gravity propulsion drive, dropping the full weight of the Wraith to the ground, sparking and smoking.

A moment later it explodes as a mortar round from the Marines hits the now un-shielded vehicle and blows it open. There are only four Elites left. Two fall to a UNSC gunner in a hot-box behind their barricades. The other two: one you put a full magazine into after you bull into his shield like a freight train, knocking it aside and open his guard to a point-blank spray of bullets. The last Elite – he tackles you with an energy sword, slams you to the ground and tries to put the blade through your skull. You have your boot jammed up under his combat harness, up into his ribs, keeping him off you, your hands around both his wrists as he roars and thrashes, the quad-split of his jaw flaring open, flecks of spittle spraying your visor. He rears back and lunges again, trying to force the prongs of the steaming energy weapon through the front of your helmet, the tip scorching a path up the jawline. You grunt and kick him off. His blade slices your leg armor. You pull your side arm.

You put twelve handgun rounds into his belly before he falls.

He falls.

You breathe.

And then you’re sitting on the ground with a gun in your hands and there are no Covenant left to fight.

 _Okay,_ you think. You’re not sure what kind of thoughts you’re supposed to have after completing your first objective. You decide you’re supposed to think about your next objective and holster your pistol to the mag-strip at your thigh, retrieving the Elite’s energy sword and battle shield. You test out both and find them functional. Mag-holster them as well and that’s when the Marines find you.

“Holy shit.”

You look over at them. There’s a group of four walking slowly toward you through the smoke, rifles in hand, but not pointed at anything. One of them has pulled his helmet up so you can see his face. He’s Korean, young, sweaty, a scar on his nose, eyes wide. He looks like a cadet, not a Marine. The strip of cloth sewn into the shoulder of his armor says ‘Felix’.

“Holy shit, you’re a SPARTAN.”

Oh. You have to talk now.

“Yeah,” you say.

“You were in the drop-pod?”

The other Marines are pulling their helmets off too, or deactivating the tinting on their visors so you can see them looking up at you from inside their equipment. Some of them are grinning. Some of them are really not. Most of them have eyes so wide you can see the white all around the edges.

“Yeah.”

“The fucking pod that got shot down? That was you?”

You shrug. “Sorry.”

“What are you saying sorry for? Being late to the fuckin’ party?” Felix seems to be the talker. He’s grinning. “You took out the turret nest and the Wraith in less than minute. You’re allowed to be late, solider.”

“Casualties?”

“Not as many as there would have been.”

You nod.

“Okay then, uh…” He looks at the other Marines, then back to you. “Jeez, I just can’t believe they sent a SPARTAN. Sorry, none of us have ever seen one of you guys in action before.” He kind of looks you up and down. “You’re… really big.” You don’t think he’s expecting you to respond to that so you just tilt your head at him and rest one hand on the stock of your sidearm. Felix seems to note the gesture as one of impatience because he says, “C’mon. Gunny will wanna talk to you. There’s three other Covvie squads hassling our security check points. ”

You follow the Marine, who glances back at you, eyes still wide.

“What’s your name, sir?”

You tap the number painted 79 on your shoulder armor, then say, “Arthur.”

***

This is how you get offered your first beer, SPARTAN-000. It’s been a few hours since all forces were recalled to HQ, you and the forward teams having handily cleared out the south-west quadrant of the city and re-secured it with proper UNSC presence again. You’re waiting outside the officer’s tent, watching a pair of soldiers arm wrestle over possession of something called a Twinkie when Felix and a small group of Marines from his squad come to join you. 

“Arthur. Hey.”

It’s going to take a while to get used to that.

“You should grab something to eat before the gunny finds something else for you to shoot. Mess is in hangar three. We can show you where. Come with us.”

You shake your head.

“Ate,” you say.

Felix blinks at the single-syllable come back. You are aware it’s an awkward response, but you don’t feel like working up multi-word answers just right now and you’re not hungry anyway. You picked up a half a dozen protein bars and a bottle of water from the mess and ate while you went over a system check with your armor. You did this in the privacy of a space between two parked tanks, because everyone’s been staring at you since you got here and it kind of is starting to bug you.

“When did you –?” Felix revises his question. “Never mind. The CO’s need you?”

You glare, but they can’t see you glaring. “No.”

Go back to watching the two soldiers fighting over the Twinkie. You’ve found that when you don’t want to answer a question, simply dropping your chin and looking down at whoever asked the question for a good five seconds tends to get them to rephrase or withdraw their query pretty quickly. But the cold shoulder and a height difference is clearly not an effective strategy against these guys because they’re all still grinning and they haven’t left yet.

“Okay, fine, I’ll just come out and say it: You need to come with us.”

“Why?”

“Just c’mon. It’ll take like five minutes.”

“ _Why_?”

“Oh, look, seriously, we’re trying to do the opposite of bother you. You saved a lot of guys today and some of ‘em want to say thanks, but one of ‘em can’t move because he got shot in the ass. And we, like, owe you a beer or something. I’ll drink it for you, if you’re not gonna or whatever. That okay with you, big guy?”

You’re… not sure actually. You kind of don’t want to get up and be thanked by anyone for anything; you’d much rather just sit here quietly and be left alone while you do systems checks and watch people eat and laugh and field strip rifles and complain about their officers and guys who get better patrol shifts than them. You’d be perfectly goddamn content just sitting here all night while people play poker and smoke and arm wrestle over pastries you’ve never heard of. This, for you, is a great deal of why you wanted to be in the field in the first place – where  you could fight and think and no one could stop you from having unfiltered access to the rest of humanity.

You just… hadn’t considered that humanity might be kind of pushy and keep grinning at you and offer you beers you don’t really want. 

“Fine,” you say.

It’s kind of stunning the effect this has.

You’re not entirely sure if you stood up on your own power or, through sheer jarhead enthusiasm, the Marines managed to move 1000 pounds of SPARTAN because you’re on your feet all of a sudden and getting herded toward the mess area. You still tower over everyone else, most of whom come up to your shoulder at best and it takes you a minute, but you realize people are cheerfully slapping you on the back and saying things like, “ _I thought you were a fucking truck that drove into that turret hinge-head on the overpass!”_ and “ _He put a grenade up the damn tailpipe, knocked it’s anti-grav out.”_ and “ _Must’ve been goin’ least fifty miles per hour. How fast were you goin, boss?” “Wrestled a fucking Gator and kicked it across the street.” “How much can you lift?” “What’re they feeding you?” “How’d you survive that pod-drop?”_

You can’t really answer any of these questions and before you have a chance to even come anywhere near thinking of an answer you’re standing in front of a full mess area and the whole damn platoon is suddenly on its feet cheering, the roar of their enthusiasm fairly deafening, boots stamping, fists hammering on tables and building toward a great cacophonous din that threatens to shake down the hangar.

You don’t know what’s happening so you just hold still.

“Okay so!” Felix is a living loudspeaker. His voice booms out over everyone else’s, the man having climbed up on a table to speak and even then he’s not that much taller than you stand in your armor. “SHUT UP YOU ASSHOLES!” Laughter. “Okay, so for those of you fuckers who don’t know who this guy is – this is Arthur. He’s a real life fucking SPARTAN. This motherfucker got shot out of orbit to help us kill some Covvie bastards. _Unfortunately,_ because command in its infinite wisdom decided to deploy him without checking in with ground units, Arthur got shot out of the sky and landed in a parking garage a mile away.”

Uproarious laughter. You tilt your head at Felix who is fully engaged in his retelling. You hadn’t known about the failure in communication to the ground troops and wonder if it’s true or just embellishment. Felix has a beer now. You missed who handed it to him.

“Despite this setback, Arthur here managed to run out of the Covvie-controlled sector of the city. And when I say ‘run’ I mean at about sixty-miles an hour straight into a full squad of Storm Elites who he proceeded to fucking murder with the _prejudice_ befitting any _fucker in this outfit_!”

Cheers again. You may not be entirely comfortable standing here, your shoulders back, chin down, not quite square to the crowd… but you do like watching the effect of Felix’s story on the other soldiers, who light up into shouting and smiles. Felix is waving that beer at you.

“So! Three cheers for our SPARTAN!”

They probably mean to do three cheers. But by the second cheer, the whole place just kind of comes unglued for two minutes straight while you decide that maybe _this_ , not necessarily the killing of a troublesome squad of Elites, is why your handlers have you out here. You don’t stay much longer. One of the officers shows up to tell everyone to put a lid on it and to have you come back to the command tent. You have to duck to get in the door, but once you’re inside, they tell you the map you picked up shows every Covenant rally point in the region. They ask you if you’re ready to finish what you started.

You suppose you are.


	2. Fight

They lied to you of course: they cannot teach you of war.

The vocabulary is wrong: They are not Covenant soldiers, they’re Covvies. It’s not a Sangheili it’s a gator, dino, or hinge-head. The Kig-Yar are Jackals, Yanme are Buggers or Drones. Unggoy are Grunts, Jiralhanae are Brutes or apes. By the end of the third week, you think of them in these terms primarily and you go on patrol with a forward squad in the mornings.

Private Jules is saying, “Look. I’m just saying.” He’s sitting in the Warthog as you get out of the passenger’s seat. “You even got a face under there man? Just take off the helmet for a minute will ya? Settle a bet.”

And then Private Jules ends at the ribcage. The plasma shot that blew him apart at the sternum was, in all likelihood, meant for you but poorly aimed. Private Jules slaps your armor – half mulch, mostly spray, but you don’t have much time to think about Jules being all over you, SPARTAN-000. There’s your own blood pounding through your head and the sound of other Marines dying and you, your job is to make the dying stop so you do. By killing the monsters killing them. And when the fucking dirt is a soup of bluish mud and your armor is gummed with gore – it’s only then that you stop and consider Private Jules.

It’s hard to get blood off your armor after it coagulates.

That’s what you learn on Tribute.

***

Tantalus. Tier 3 Inner Colony planet. Epsilon Eridani system. You deploy under the service tags 069. Soloman-069. They don’t hard-drop you into the area this time. They have an ONI-III pilot take you planet-side in a small Pelican with nothing in it but you and her and the equipment you’re bringing with you. She complains of driving you most of the way down while you sit in the back of her empty ship, the one cargo in the whole vehicle which invites her to inquire just what the fuck is so special about you, Big Guy. Meaning she must see enough SPARTANs not to think too terribly much of you or she’s just trying to be flip.

“Hey. Hey, Guy.”

You glance up toward the cockpit. Your line-of-sight is such that you can see her looking over her shoulder to speak with you. You wish she wouldn’t but she seems very well insistent on talking at you.

“Hey, come up here for a second.”

You don’t move.

“C’mon. I don’t have all day, Goliath. Let’s move.”

You don’t know the name she called you, but you hit the release on your safety harness and get up, ducking into the cock-pit with the pilot whose face you cannot see through the tint of her helmet. She still obviously looks you up and down then waves you to lean down. You’re not sure where she’s going with this, but if she’s going to whisper in your ear, that seems a little odd given you’re both still wearing helmets. You put your hand on the back of her seat and lean down though.

“Look,” she says. “I wanna give you some advice.”

You don’t know how you feel about that.

“Seriously. Just how long have you even been active? I never shuttle just one of you dudes around.”

Just growl ambiguously.

“Right, right, right. Look, I’ve seen a lot of you giant motherfuckers come and go and I just want to give you a heads up.”

You wait.

“Don’t let anyone talk you into fucking them. Okay?”

Stare.

“I’m just saying. I’ve heard some shit. Don’t fuck anyone that’s not another SPARTAN. Ya got me?” She shakes her head. “Poor fucking bastards think it’s such a good idea and I know not all of you fucks get talked to about that shit so I’m gonna just give you the memo – SPARTAN dick doesn’t pay nice with holes that aren’t SPARTAN proof, like other SPARTANs for example. Like, okay, I get that it takes an hour to even get out of that armor or whatever but if you meet a really determined man or woman who wants to have a SPARTAN dick story to take home – don’t let ‘em do it.”

Keep staring.

“Look, maybe fraternization ain’t your jam or whatever, but I’m just covering all my bases.”

You’ve stopped staring in favor of going back to your seat where there is significantly less talk about sexual misadventures. The pilot leaves you alone for the rest of the trip. When she drops you on Tantalus she says “Good luck, kid. Kill Covvies for me.”

Then she’s gone and for the next four months you help UNSC forces take out Covenant dropships. You nearly die eight times. They don’t have the manpower to help you do anything so they just they send you – they tell you – to take on twenty-to-one odds because that’s why you’re here right? You’re here to fight an army, right? You tell them ‘yes’ and watch them fuck up your deployments over and over because the unit Captain’s crapped out on his training he keeps sending conveys into the middle of Banchee strafing runs.

Four times this happens. Get lucky three times in a row with RPGs and concentrated fire-discipline on individual targets synced up through inter-team HUD markers. The fourth time the Banchees bring a Phantom and drop thirty Zealot-Class Elites and two Brutes on top of the convoy where they proceed to tear soldiers limb from limb. One ape charges and flips the Warthog you’re in. It rolls, crushing the woman in the gunner position and decapitating the driver. You dive free in time to watch them die and fire three sticky grenades into the Brute’s spine, then watch the second Brute tear a Gunny Sergeant in half two cars up from you.

It takes half an hour straight of non-stop fighting to get the rest of the convoy through with two thirds of the personnel originally sent out. The unit Captain makes the mistake of talking to you instead of the unit LT, because the field LT has a needler round through his thigh and can’t be debriefed.

“Petty Officer, I need you on the convoy back through the basin.”

Stare.

“I know it’s rough.” He slaps you on the shoulder. Hate his touch on your armor more intensely than the Sangheili that bloodied it. He says, with commanderly muster, “But we need to link back up with Bravo and you’re the only man for the job. We’re counting on you, SPARTAN.”

***

The supply drops don’t come. You’re pretty new at all this but even to a boot-fuck greenhorn like yourself this seems like a fucking problem. The unit CO’s think it’s great you can function on one ration every other day because everyone is on one ration a day for the next three weeks so while they do resent that you require at least three MREs and bottled water a week – because it would have been ‘ideal’ if they’d built you to run on sunshine and wishful thinking – they do get you the bare minimum that you require to fight at peak.

The other Marines are so used to supply drop fails they’re just happy to see you. “You’re the first fucking supply drop we’ve seen in weeks,” says Sargent Martinez, slapping you on the back in a cheerful manner. She’s tall, biceps the size of her head, her left ear clipped off at the top. “We like you, Sol, but I would be lying if I said we’d like you a lot more if you were made out of jerky.”

“Haaa, Martinez wants SPARTAN meat in her mouth!”

“Shut up, Bleaker, you cum-guzzling, bow-legged, whiskey-tango fuck wagon.”

She says this with the most affection physically possible.

“Yes sir, Sargent Martinez, sir. God speed, sir, on your mission to gobble as much giant cock as physically possible, sir.”

“Thank you, Corporal, you shrimp-dicked gator-fucker, kindly resume shitting your guts out in silence. That’s an order.”

Corporal Bleaker salutes from the plywood box he’s using as a crapper, a Covvie plasma rifle propped up against his knee. Everyone carries their UNSC issue rifle with them, but no one has ammo so everyone also carries a variety of stolen Covenant side arms and battle rifles to actually use in battle. 20% of the company has the shits, 5% are in medical because of it or because they got a chest full of needler rounds. Everyone is hungry. Martinez laughs, slaps her knee, and doubles over when you ask how long it’s been since a supply drop of any kind.  

“We’re Marines,” she says, sometime later while showing you around the dilapidated motorpool. “You may or may not be aware of this, but Marines are the last in line to get jack all. It’s been that way since times immemorial and the arrival of the hingeheads to literally end our goddamn species has not changed that. Go figure. I’m motherfucking _shocked_ they gave us a SPARTAN.”

“We have a theory,” says Corporal Bei-Fong, swinging out from under a vehicle, “that it was a clerical error and you’re supposed to be with another outfit.”

“NO TAKE BACKS MOTHERFUCKER!” says someone from the other side of the moterpool.

“Not the first time we’ve stolen things from the Navy.”

“No, look,” says Bleaker. ”They did this on purpose because sending one dude is easier than sending us the actual shit we requested because command, in its infinite retardation, hears us request food and fucking ammo and you know, shit that keeps us alive, so they take that request, wipe their asses with it, and send us one dude in fancy armor.”

“It’s really fuckin’ fancy armor.”

“The fuckin’ fanciest.”

Martinez winks at you. “Sorry. You’re stuck with us now. They obviously don’t like you much, Petty Officer.”

One week later, get assigned to a squad mission eliminating a Covvie light frigate. Find yourself on your back crawling out of a crash-site, bleeding quietly into your titanium nanocomposite bodysuit while your HUD tells you you’re out of bio-foam. You used all of yours on other soldiers and to stopper the bleeding from your inner thigh, lower back, and the near miss in your shoulder. The men and women in the Pelican with you are dead. You’re the only one alive because of your armor and you don’t know how to feel about that so you just lie there in the pulverized, ash-blacked dirt and hold your side and moan.

It hurts. It hurts a lot.

This is what you learn on Tantalus: Don’t stick your dick in anything that can’t handle it. Bad command decisions will kill you just as fast as a well-planned Covenant assault. It takes five kilo of C-4 to the primary slip drive to take down a Covvie light frigate. You can survive for months on a diet of nothing but beef jerky, jolt-fuel, and stale water.

And don’t be surprised to find that you have holes in your training, SPARTAN-000. You find this out when you realize you don’t know how to use bio-foam while in the field and you have to run a brief tutorial program in the middle of a fire fight. You learn how to tie a tourniquet. You learn how to keep conscious when the rest of your body just wants to shut down and die.

You learn what it feels like to lie there half-dead for ten hours while the bodies of the soldiers you tried to save just rot in the sun. Wake up with a medic who tells you the ordinance that hit your Pelican wasn’t Covenant but UNSC friendly fire trying to take out an objective. You learn what ‘collateral’ actually means instead of its definition.

Two days later, take down a Covenant frigate solo.

***

Your name is Short Change now.

This is how you get your nick name:

You’ve been on Circumstance for a month, been in service for eighteen months now, and you still won’t take your helmet off around the other soldiers. You’re running under Soloman’s service tag and sometimes the men call you ‘Sol’ but that’s because Soloman is a mouthful when you’re taking heavy fire and you’d like the team heavy to rip the doors off a tank and pulp some skulls for the good of the UNSC. You’re better about getting the blood off your armor these days and you’ve got a pretty good routine in so much as there can be ‘routine’ on a planet embroiled in Covenant-Human violence.

You gutted five apes, six gators, and put a nitro-cored small explosive into a room with fifty Grunts inside – made neon blue paste out of each and every one of them. Yesterday you ran out of ammo and killed a dozen Covvies with a ka-bar and a stolen plasma rifle. The day before that you dead-dropped onto a Sangheili Ultra and crushed his skull in front of his men and then you shot them all with a full-automatic and by the time you were done, the armored squad that killed six Marines earlier that week had to be hosed off your boots back at the motor pool.

Today, though, you’re sitting up in the back of a Warthog with your rifle in your lap and a data pad against your knee. This is where you spend most of your down time – sitting in an empty vehicle, waiting for the next deployment.

“Whatcha reading this time?”

Private Everson has stuck his head over the side of the truck bed. You shut down the data pad and breathe loudly at him, which is an unsettlingly aggressive sound – you breathing. Everson is an incorrigible fuck though. He, like many others in this outfit, have taken an interest in whatever the hell you’re doing regardless of how boring it might be. There is also a sizable pool about what you look like under your helmet so it’s become the business of every other off-duty NCO and soldier to tempt you to take your helmet off.

“Look, okay, this time I’ve got it.”

You wait.

“No but seriously. It’s like we agreed right?”

You breathe at him.

“Okay okay! Earth originals. No colony knock-offs. True blue, scout’s honor!” (You have no idea what either of those phrases mean.) He holds out a red polypropylene package with a picture of bright, primary colored candies spilled across the front. “Skittles!” he says, triumphant. 

You shake your head.

Everson looks crestfallen. “Really? No?”

You shake your head.

“ _Never?_ ”

You snort and shake your head again.

“Damn.” Everson stares sadly at the little bag of candy. “It’s like you didn’t have a damn childhood, man.”

You don’t say anything about that. 

Here’s the deal: If any of the soldiers in the unit can bring you contraband sweets that you liked when you were a kid then you’ll take off your helmet. You agreed to these ridiculous terms to stop overly sociable Marines from butting in on your down time with random negotiations. Though, since Everson is still here, butting in on your down time, it hasn’t worked so well. That said – contraband candy is hard to get on the frontlines of Circumstance so it’s only every other day or so that someone has something new to bounce off you.

It’s a rigged game though.

SPARTAN recruits don’t get candy.

“You suuuuure you never had Skittles. Halloween? Birthday parties? C’mon this is one brand that is on almost every colony.” Everson weathers the weight of your displeased stare for about a solid minute then hops down off the truck. “Okay. Cross that one off, big guy. We’re gonna find something though. Just wait!”

You wait until he’s gone before opening your data pad and getting back to what you were reading. At some point Everson suggested that you read comic books and since he had quite a few on his personal he forwarded the lot. Thereafter, people have been forwarding you any and all of their reading suggestions. The datapad belongs to one of the squad captains who gave everyone his inbox link so they could send you files; he has told you the datapad is yours to use until you’re reassigned. It’s a small gesture but everyone in the company makes small gestures for you these days.

It’s difficult you suppose. You make it difficult.

In the months that you’ve been here you’ve changed the whole landscape of the fighting on Circumstance. You’re the reason soldiers aren’t going home in half-filled body-bags that drip and stink of plasma residue. You’re the reason half their mobile artillery is smoldering slag, cratered holes smoking and filling with Covvie blood. You make it difficult because you won’t talk to them, or eat in the mess area with them, or sleep in the racks with any of them, or even be around them for any extended periods of time that aren’t punctuated by extreme violence and gunfire.

They thank you for being their SPARTAN by forwarding you reading material and guessing at your favorite candy.

This is how to get your nick name:

You get out of the Warthog and head back toward the mess to pick up another bottle of water. It’s night by then and on your way you pass a circle of men and women, most of whom you don’t recognize and suppose came in with the latest batch of replacements and reinforcements this morning. One of them, a blonde-haired man with his back to you, is saying, “A man walks to a bar and asks for H2O. The man next to him says, "Can I have an H2O too?" Everyone groans, but the blonde guys goes on, “That man died because instead of water, he got hydrogen peroxide!”

H202.

You snort and keep walking.

“Who’s that?”

“Our resident SPARTAN.”

“You have a SPARTAN in this company? Like… a regular? I thought they weren’t with any particular outfit.”

“They aren’t but he’s been assigned here for about a month now. I shit you fucking not, that guy is the most stoic fucking dude. He can’t talk, some kind of injury, so he just shows up, kills things, then goes off and sits by himself and …” And then you’re too far away to hear anything. You pick up your water and head back the way you came. You don’t mind them talking that way about you; not anymore, not since most of it is true and they all seem very comfortable with you fitting some kind of bill for what the unit heavy should be like. As you return the same man, Everson, is saying, “Look, Seattle, it’s not that we don’t just love your fucking chemistry jokes, it’s just that I beat up guys like you in high-school and I’m trying to save my energy for the Covvies.”

The new guy ‘Seattle’ doesn’t seem impressed with this statement. He’s got a box of something in his hand – a purple package with gold lettering that he’s shaking over his open palm. Half a dozen small square colored taffy candies pile into his hand and he says, “I would love to see you try to beat me up, Everson.”

“You wanna go?”

“Didn’t you eat a rock?”

“What? Who told you that?”

“When I got here they made everyone sit through a talk about not eating rocks when we get bored. They only do that if _someone_ did it. I figured only a Marine could possibly think that was a good idea and you seem likely.”

“Oh, Earth-boy’s got jokes.”

“So you did eat a rock.”

“Seattle, I’m gonna – uh…”

Everson stops talking. He stops talking because instead of passing by, you’re standing there looking intently at the new guy. You can see by his chevrons that he’s a sergeant, but by the state of his weapon and armor that he’s likely a lower squad leader – a second for a primary NCO, weapon certification 5 at least. The mods on his assault rifle are either off the books or he cleared for them. His hair is eye-achingly blonde, to the point that it doesn’t look natural on him. His skin is olive, darkened by freckles so insistent they visually change the overall tone of his complexion across his cheeks. There’s a scar that splits his right eyebrow and when he looks at you it’s with a kind of casual question in his eyes.

“Hey,” he says, because everyone else is just staring. “Wanna sit down?

You don’t answer, but you do come and crouch down next to Seattle, who leans back a little to look at you, still in your full armor.

“You headed out on patrol?” He thinks you must be going somewhere to be armored up still. He also doesn’t give you time to answer. He holds up the box he’s holding; from here you can see the name on the packaging: _Short Change_ and when you see it there’s a room in your mind and the room has a person in it. That person is smiling and leaning down, the same purple box in their hand and they’re saying, and Seattle is saying,“Want some?”

“Sure.”

No one says a damn thing.

Seattle doesn’t notice because he’s shaking a generous pile into your gloved hand.

“I’m just saying, someone ate a rock and they assigned you guys your own SPARTAN so that speaks to the intelligence of this outfit I think.” No one responds to Seattle. They’re all looking at you, but Seattle still doesn’t notice. He picks up his rifle and shucks the magazine from the stock, inspects it for damage, and slots it back in. “Or at least your intelligence, Everson. No one is denying that you’re the guy who ate the rock. Okay. What are you all –?”

He stops at the sound of your helmet seal being released.

He seems to ken something is going on because he peers up at you. Everson says softly, “Oh my god.” Seattle blinks when you hand him your helmet, but takes it from you without and word. It seems massive in his hands. The silence is kind of awkward but not awkward enough to break while you lean back against the supply crates Seattle is sitting against and pop a couple of Short Change onto your tongue. 

“What’s happening?” demands Seattle, leaning over to whisper to the machine gunner sitting across from him. “Why are we staring?”

She answers softly, “He’s never taken his helmet off before.”

“How _old_ are you?” says Everson, loudly.

You ignore Everson’s question. You’re busy trying to organize the way Short Change tastes with the way it feels and the room in your head with someone laughing gently and shaking a colorful pile the same size as the one Seattle gave you, but the fact that the same amount overflowed from your cupped hands, tumbling over your fingers to the hardwood floor. You close your eyes and try to bring her face into definition but you can’t – you can only guess, suppose a woman with dark ringlets and brown skin. Her smile white in the blur of her face.

_“Oops. That’s okay.”_

You remember hands closing over yours and someone kissing their closed thumbs over your palms, her hands close like a prayer around yours.

_“I’ll have the yellow and orange ones. You can have the green and the pink.”_

Smell – coffee and jasmine.

_“I love you.”_

“No, seriously,” says Everson, “How fucking old are you?”

“Shut up, Everson,” says Kohl, the machine gunner, glaring at him.

“No. We have a company-wide pool going on how old he is and you know how many bet ‘not old enough to drink?’ No one. No one bet that.”

“Shut. Up,” grits Kohl. “Or I will make you eat another rock, you fuck.”

“I knew it,” says Seattle, breaking the mood. “You _did_ eat a rock.”

“Shut up!”

Seattle gives you the box and says, “Oi, Short Change, what did the bartender say when oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, sodium, and phosphorous walked into his bar?”


	3. Seattle

Seattle has a kitten on his shoulder. You don’t ask him where he got the kitten, but you can guess. The city of Kuiper was hit by orbital artillery ten hours ago. For nine and half hours you, Echo, Dog, and Mellow Company have been desperately fighting the Covenant ground and aerial troops that flooded the devastated downtown metro and started – according to the reports – ‘slaughtering every man woman and child left breathing’. There is evidence to that effect.

Now that the fighting is done, the kitten was probably the only living thing Seattle could find.

He’s quietly feeding it bits of jerky.

“Well,” he says, “this is a fucking nightmare.”

You’re still covered in Covvie blood, but your hands are mostly clean so you take a piece of jerky from Seattle and gently let the kitten chew and eat it from your fingertips. It mewls, a tinny sound, its fuzzy flanks quivering. There’s blood beneath your boots, red and blue. They are clearing the corpses from the street like rugs and in rugs and in bags and not in bags and in a few minutes you’re going to join them because the weight of a human body in your arms is frightfully light and you can move so many more bodies.

This is not the worst part.

You find a little girl in a blue dress. She is lying face down on the steps of a courthouse, the front and back of her sun dress burned where the plasma sword passed through her. Seattle watches you start to pick her up, then stop and simply crouch there, halfway through the motion. What arrests you is not that she is a child, is not that she is the first one you’ve ever seen since you woke up again. It’s just that her dress, except for the burns, is clean and you don’t want to get Sangheili blood on her clothes. You don’t know why, but… you just don’t want to do it.

You can’t.

Seattle touches your arm. He is the one who comes over and slides his hands under her knees and shoulders and scoops her body into his arms. Seattle does his fighting from a distance. His armor is clean save the dirt.

“It’s okay,” he says as he walks toward the trucks. Her head against his shoulder – the cinnamon coils of her hair braided in cornrows, threaded with yellow ribbon. Seattle carries her like she’s still alive and the kitten on his shoulder sniffs her hair and nuzzles her braids. Seattle looks up at you. “I’ve got her.”

 

***

 

It’s been six months on Circumstance. The longest single deployment you’ve ever had and Seattle has a bottle of contraband tequila that he wants to share with you. You’re not sure how exactly that it’s come about but Seattle is your best friend. Arguably, he’s your _only_ friend but the fact of the matter is that any soldier in this outfit could have been the one with a box of Earther candy that set your memory off in color and sound. It could have been any soldier with a handful of her voice – the woman you think may have been your mother. It could have been anyone but it was Seattle.

“Does this even affect you?”

You’re half way through the bottle. You’re the one drinking most of it, actually, because Seattle is a third your size and weight so you’re taking two thirds of the bottle not, you’re pretty sure, that it would make a difference if you drank the whole thing. You’ve never had alcohol before. It tastes vile and chemical – the bitter solution cut with the taste of Seattle’s mouth on the lip of the bottle. He doesn’t seem to notice though. He’s lying on his back with his cat curled up in his helmet, his head pillowed on one arm behind his head.

“Huh?” you say, but it’s not really ‘huh’. You sort of growl indistinctly.

It doesn’t seem to matter though. “I mean does the alcohol,” Seattle says, shaking his head. “Not the fighting.”

Of course not the fighting. You aren’t talking about the fighting because the fighting has been ongoing and violent and forever. Seattle’s whole squad has been slowly and then suddenly obliterated. He lost half his squad to statistically unavoidable losses when fighting three to one against Covenant elites. He lost the other half when an artillery shell hit their transport two weeks in which, statistically, seemed pretty unlikely.

He hasn’t led another squad since – rather, the Captain had him assigned (in an unofficial capacity) to watch your back. Seattle was squad leader for exactly two weeks and in that time his squad was dead. It is, perhaps, understandable that he might not want to lead another group of men and women into battle. It is, perhaps, understandable that Seattle does not consider himself having ever truly led anyone. It is, perhaps, understandable that he might be better suited to fighting with the one person in the Company who doesn’t seem capable of dying.

You don’t mind.

You like Seattle.

“So?” His boot nudges your knee. “Feel anything?”

No.

You shrug.

“Man, it was hard getting that stuff and it’s totally wasted on you,” says Seattle, sitting up and gesturing for you to give him the bottle. You shove him over and take a large swig, what might be considered at least two shots worth and by the time Seattle sits back up there’s not much left in the bottom. “Asshole,” he complains, taking the bottle from you. “I’m trying to get really fucked up here. At least one of us should.”

You think that you’re both pretty fucked up, but that’s not what he means.

“Okay, Soloman is not your name.”

You look at him.

“You don’t look like a Soloman. You just don’t.” He’s pretty drunk so you ignore his question. “How’re you a SPARTAN? How’d you become a SPARTAN? How does… how does anyone become a SPARTAN?”

You shake your head. “No.”

“No,” he repeats.

“ _No_.”

He lets it go. Instead, he kind of stretches out and considers the dark bowl of the sky and the distant moons traveling the orbital paths of this planet. You’re quiet together for a moment. Then Seattle grunts, rolls over and picks your helmet out of the grass. He brushes grass out of his hair and sits up, holding it in his hands and staring into the visor for a moment, eyes tracking his own refection in the mirrored material. Then he turns it over, peers inside the helmet.

Don’t say a thing as he puts on your helmet and turns to look at you. You snort and hold your hand out.

“It’s heavy,” he says, voice muffled. “All the armor you wear is so fucking heavy.” He doesn’t take the helmet off. He just sits back and lies down again, wearing your helmet. “That’s why you’re not drunk. You’re just way too fucking big to get drunk. I’d need a lot more tequila.” He doesn’t seem intimidated when you lean over him, scowling. “Seriously,” he says, voice kinds of echoing in the cavernous interior of your helmet. “It’s impossible for you to be as big as you are and do what you do.”

You reach down, take your helmet between your hands and tug it off so you can look Seattle in the face.

“No,” you say slowly. “It’s not.”

He grins at you. “You’re a hell of a soldier, Short Change.”

You put your helmet back on and you ignore how the inside of it is warm from his breath, the padding against your jaw skin-temperature. You think about what you’re going to do the day he gets a hinge-head energy blade through his ribs. You think about what you’re going to do the day you have to load him into the back of a truck in a bag or a bit of tarp. You wonder how much he’s going to weigh in your arms or if he will feel any heavier than any other bodies you’ve carried to be stacked and taken to a mass grave. (Because the UNSC cannot afford to send the dead home across distant star systems to the colonies and worlds they called home.) You stand up and offer Seattle a hand

Seattle grasps your wrist and you tug him up with no effort.

His weight is nothing. When he stands he doesn’t let go of your wrist.

“Hey can you tell me something? Can you just tell me if Soloman is your real name? Like just yes or no.”

And you say, “No.”

You don’t even think about it.

“You’re never gonna tell me your real name. Are you?”

“No.”

He lets go of your wrist, picks up his gun, and his helmet with the kitten inside. He says, “That’s fine. I just wanted to know it was okay I don’t call you that, if it’s not your name.” The kitten in his helmet stirs and sticks its head out, mewing, and Seattle scratches her behind the ears, not looking at you. “We should get back. The assault starts in the morning.” He slaps you on the shoulder. You can’t feel it through your armor. “Let’s go, buddy. They’re gonna need a SPARTAN.”

You think about Seattle dying. Imagine him in the window of your mind, you design the bullet that is going to rip through his stomach, the mortar that will blow his lower leg from his knee, the sniper round that hisses through the screen of his visor, dropping him quietly in the sunshine to the dirt. Think about carrying him – in pieces – to the medics who will triage him on a gurney in a tent while others with better chances of survival take precedent. Examine the slow frond of dread that unfurls through your body, coiling into your guts and setting claws into dark, nerve-dense parts of you.

He notices that you’re not following.

“Coming?” he says, putting his cat on his shoulder. They both peer at you.

You say, “Don’t die.”

Seattle laughs. It’s such an easy sound. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Don’t.”

“I can’t die, Short Change. I’m way too good looking.” He shrugs, slaps his rifle to the mag-strip on his back. “Besides, they’ll all be shooting at your ass anyway.”

***

You’re still running as Solomon-069 on the planet Circumstance when you encounter other SPARTANs for the first time. You don’t encounter them lightly either. You’re helping Seattle with Warthog repairs by gripping up under the front right wheel-well and lifting until your partner finishes in wedging something jammed up into massive spokes. You feel someone tap you on the shoulder and when you turn there is a five-man SPARTAN squad standing behind you.

You don’t panic exactly, but your thoughts arrest themselves and your heart jumps in your chest and you don’t know if it’s dread or awe that makes your stomach tighten and your breath thread. One of them, the lead SPARTAN, has her helmet off. She’s fair-boned, pale, a narrow nose and a face dusted by freckles, her brown hair drawn back in a knot at the base of her skull and she looks at you in a way that might dismantle you. She’s waifish and eerie – hauntingly pretty.

“We need to talk,” she says.

You can’t really talk. You say, “About?”

“You.” She steps into your space. “If you’ll excuse us,” she says to Seattle. “I need to talk to Soloman here.”

Seattle dusts off his hands, stands up… then very pointedly doesn’t go anywhere. She looks down at him but he’s not looking at her, he’s looking at you, his head quirked with the question: _You good here?_ He doesn’t move until you jerk your chin, indicating he head to the mess area and leave this to you. He eyes Kelly a moment longer before picking up his rifle and sliding past the silent armored group of massive super soldiers.

“No fighting, kids,” says Seattle under his breath.

The other SPARTANS clearly hear this comment, as one of them turns their head to follow him, but none of them react otherwise. They wait until the other soldier is gone and then they all take one step closer to you, closing the circle, your back to the vehicle.

“I’m Kelly,” says the SPARTAN who isn’t wearing a helmet. She’s got it under her arm and she isn’t smiling. “I knew Soloman-069.” You close your eyes, think very clearly and loudly _fuck._ “I know he’s dead, SPARTAN, so I want to know why you’re running under his service tag and what you’re actual tag is. Under whose orders are you running a dead man’s name?”

“Probably ONI-II bullshit,” says one of them at her left, female, softly. 

You open a short-wave and forward the Level Zero command codes to her and her squad. They all look at each other without saying anything. Kelly shrugs. “Sorry,” she says, tossing her helmet to one of her SPARTANs. “My radio’s off right now.”

You blink, stunned immobile by her easy dismissal of command structure.

“Take off your fucking helmet.”

“No.”

“I said take it off.”

You tense up as she steps even nearer to you. The gray-green of her eyes are the same as yours, dark at the edges pale in the iris, the pupils too big and blown wide, making her stare vaguely alien but achingly familiar to you. She has your eyes. She flicks a finger against the chin of your helmet – she does this so fast that you don’t see her do it until her fingers are digging into the place where the throat of your bodysuit meets the chin of your helmet.

“Either take it off or we’ll take it off for you.”

“Against orders,” you say, backing up a step, bumping into the vehicle.

“She said,” begins one of the male SPARTANs to your right, “take it off or…”

Kelly stops him with a stare, then looks back to you. “I don’t give a damn what your orders are. Your face isn’t classified and I want to know who is running under Soloman’s service tag. I’ve been talking to the soldiers stationed here and you’re solo-deploy, hard-drop and extract which means they are running you the opposite of how any SPARTAN is supposed to run. You must not be one of Halsey’s. So who are you? Another new model?”

“Back off.”

“Take off your helmet.” She shoves you shoulder, lightly. “Do it or –”

You try to shove her back. You move fast, in the blink of an eye, but Kelly… you don’t even see her move. She grabs your wrists and shoves you back against the Warthog. The other SPARTANS don’t even bother jumping to help her; they’ve clearly ranked your threat level far below hers. So it startles them a little when you drop your weight, growl, and _shove_ Kelly back. She blinks, steps back and releases you. And you shove her – no, she catches your hands, palm to palm, her fingers knitting with yours. One-to-one you both push and nothing happens, the two of you standing there, trembling slightly and slowly, deathly slowly, you begin to power her backward. She grunts, her lip pulling back a fraction, her teeth gritted…

Then she twists sideways, throws you forward and yanks your gun off your back all in one move. You’re fast enough to catch yourself, roll and come back to your feet but not fast enough to stop two other SPARTANs from hooking their elbows up under your armpits and slamming you on your back to the ground. You can’t over power two SPARTAN’s but you thrash anyway, force them to hold you down until Kelly gets close enough to kick at her. She catches your foot by the ankle, elbows aside your follow up kick at her face and then she’s on top of you – hands around your neck.

She’s terrifyingly fast.

She has one hand around your throat and the other behind your head and she says, “I could snap your neck right here.” The way she says it… it’s almost gentle. “But I’m not going to do that because that’s not what I’m here for, SPARTAN. _Listen_ to me and stop.” You obey her for no other reason than the pressure her steel-boned fingers put on your trachea, crimping your airway shut. “We all know what they’re trying to do, to make more of us cheap and ugly because there’s not enough of us. That’s not your fault but I swear to God if you don’t hold still and respect the fact you are running under the name of one of our dead brothers I’m going to break your arm. Are we clear?”

The silence that follows her questions is deafening.

You nod and Kelly’s jaw line tenses. Her hand on your throat moves to the pressure seal beneath your chin, thumbs the release and, with more gentleness than you expected, she tugs your helmet off. The air on Circumstance is a little chemical and a little cold against your face. Kelly leans down until she’s close enough to feel the faint heat off her skin, her hand gripping the collar of your armor. She uses one curled forefinger to tip your chin up and in the seconds it takes her eyes to study yours, her finger against your skin reminds you of waking.

“That’s what I thought,” she says. “Let go of him.”

The other two let go of you and Kelly stands up, your helmet under her arm and offers you a hand up. You don’t take it immediately, rather, you sit up and just look at the other SPARTANS, their inscrutable armor faces all turned toward you. Kelly leans down a little, her hand still out.

“You’re not in trouble and I’m not going to ask you anything else about your orders. I just needed to see.”

You hesitate just a moment longer… then take her hand. She pulls you up with no visible effort, but doesn’t give your helmet back. She’s still studying your face.

“You’re Class Two,” she says. It’s not a question so you don’t answer. “You should be a bit older.”

“Maybe they aren’t even training in classes anymore…”

“The Twos would be sixteen by now, if they’re like us.”

“I thought the point was they weren’t…”

“None of us have ever been sixteen,” says one of them very clearly.

“Hush,” says Kelly and the other SPARTANs quiet down. Most of the cold is still there, but her tone is less edged. She gives your helmet back. “I thought you might be one of the Three’s. You’re too big though and you’re too strong. If you were one of them, I would have broken your wrists when you tried to fight me.” You don’t look away from her and you don’t put your helmet back on. “I don’t think you’ve been active very long. I think they’d have you with a squad if you were activated with your class.” You don’t answer. That doesn’t seem to bother her, this one sided conversation. She tilts her head. “What can we call you?”

You choose then to look at the helmet in your hands.

Kelly waits a moment, then:

“The command codes IDs you as SPARTAN-000.” The other SPARTANs snort, but Kelly doesn’t. “We’re pulling out tomorrow morning, Zero. So this is probably the last time we’ll see each other.” You look back up at her and find she has not taken her eyes off you. Her expression is not quite kind. You would not call it that, but she says, “You should stay with us until extraction. We’re set up on the east edge of camp.”

“You serious, Kelly?”

“You done, Vihn?”

The other SPARTANs exchange looks, then head east. Kelly sticks around a moment longer, accepting her helmet from one of her SPARTANs as they go. “Look. Do what you want. I’m not your commander, but I’m going to give you some advice.” She puts her helmet on – the mirrored visor reflecting your own face back at you. “SPARTANs who run alone don’t last long. You’ll end up like the Threes – running solo into one-way missions with no exit strategy and by then you’ll be fine with it.”

She glances over her shoulder, where her SPARTANs are going.

“That’s not what a SPARTAN is, Zero. We aren’t puppets.” She gives you your gun back and starts to go. “Don’t always do as you’re told.” When your hand catches her elbow, but gently, she does you the courtesy of not breaking your wrist. She turns her head, the visor regarding you a moment then, “C’mon. If they’re running you solo then I’m not going to see you again. We can be friends though.” She says this like she’s saying it from memory, “If you want.”

Nod, SPARTAN-000, Short Change, Caleb-024, then follow her.

***

Kelly is right. You don’t see her again.

***

Here’s how Seattle saves your life.

Command sends you in to take out a Sangheili weapon compound on the other side of Circumstance and Seattle comes with you. They didn’t _ask_ for volunteers to go with you, but as you’re loading up the Warthog, Seattle climbs into the gunner position, slings a bag of ammo, explosives, and spare heavy weapons into the bed of the truck. He says, “Well, they figured it can’t hurt to send you with some back up.” And when you look at him he shrugs and adds, “I gave the cat to Kohl. She’s got shore leave soon so I figure might as well. Promises to send me stupid internet videos of her when she gets home which is nice. Kohl’s nice. She told me to tell you not to die.”

You keep staring.

Seattle sighs. “Look, I’m the best marksman in the battalion. I’m the only other dude not leading a squad cleared for heavy weapon usage, and if we don’t take down this compound then the Covvies killed a lot of fucking people and they’re going to kill a lot more with what they’ve got in that depot. We’ve never seen them turn out like this and if Command says it’s important enough to pull you off the frontline to deal with, then it must be important enough to send a spare jerk with a battle rifle too.” When you continue not to say anything he huffs. “Well, how about it? Wanna go blow up some aliens?”

“Thanks.”

He’s got his helmet on, but the tint isn’t active on his visor so you catch his blink. “Don’t mention it.” He checks the turret. “And like I said: I don’t plan on dying.”

You get in the driver’s seat.

“Besides, I was running out of chemistry jokes for the men. All the good ones… Argon.”

Groan loudly from the front seat and hit the gas.

Two hours later you drive a Warthog through a Covenant barricade and put four magazines of bullets into every Sangheili, Unggoy, and Kig-yar motherfucker there. Other SPARTANs, you suppose, would use more stealth. You though… you have Seattle put a couple RPGs into one of their spare shield generators and blow ten Grunts to bits and pieces which surprises them long enough that they’re not quite ready when you drive your vehicle over the top of their acting CO and directly into their sentry post.

Seattle joins you about four minutes later after you’ve run over a few more of them and then backed the Warthog over one of their Brutes a couple times. You’re arming the charges in the bed of the truck, which you’ve parked inside the small armored dome of the compound, right next to a lot of important looking Covenant vehicles and weapon supplies. He comes running into the compound just as you’re coming out loaded with three new plasma rifles.

“We have a fucking problem.”

 “What?”

He points out beyond the mouth of the compound, into the empty field between the barricades and the trees.

“There,” he says. And before you can tell him he has a concussion, he taps his helmet, which glows at you. “Set your motion trackers. We’ve got cloaked hinge-heads. This helmet’s got VISR tech.” He shrugs when you make a ‘how the fuck’ kind of head-tilt at him. “ODST, motherfucker, who do you think I fucking am? There are seven cloaked and extremely armored looking motherfuckers at straight ahead. Some kind of advance squad? I can see them and tag them to your HUD. Transmit your neural-net access now.”

You do and he syncs the data to your helmet, tagging seven hostiles red and standing in the open in the field. Seattle empties half a clip into what looks like empty air. His bullet ricochet and spark, flaring off an energy shield – the neon outline of a Sangheili lighting up briefly before the camo readjusts.

“We’re pretty fucked,” says Seattle, hunkering down at the mouth of the compound, just behind the jammed-open blast doors, among the dead Grunts and Jackals. His boots squeak on the bloody floor. You crouch down across from him behind the opposite door. “You set the charges yet?”

You nod.

“Good. Timer or remote?”

“Remote.”

“They aren’t shooting.” He peers around the edge of the door. “Okay, so they have energy swords and I don’t speak Sangheili but I think they’re threatening to stab us honorably to death. Plan?”

“Kill ‘em.”

“See, that’s not a plan, Short Change. That’s wishful thinking.” He peers outside again. “That’s weird they’re all just kind of… waiting.” The visor of his helmet flickers again, the tinting vanishing so you can see his frown. There’s blood on his face inside his helmet.   “Jesus they’re big as –”

“Humans!”

Seattle, clearly not having expected to be addressed in English by the invisible alien death squad, gives you a kind of startled look – round about the eye-balls and such. You’re kind of busy checking your handgun – only half a clip left – so you just shrug and growl at him. He peeks around the edge of the blast doors again, squinting for a long moment before finally yelling, in a sort of confused tone of voice: “ _WHAT_?”

“I am addressing the demon, not you, insect.”

“Hear that?” says Seattle brightly, jerking his head toward the not-empty field. “Demon. They love you.” He leans his head out from behind the door again slight, shouting, “SORRY. THE DEMON’S NOT HERE RIGHT NOW. CAN I TAKE A MESSAGE?”

“Surrender, demon, and we will allow your ally to walk free.”

You and Seattle exchange a look. Seattle is making a face. You glare at him. He somehow detects that you are glaring at him and rolls his eyes, then mouths ‘bullshit’ to you through his visor. You shake your head and unclip a nitro-charge from a mag-strip on your lower back. When you both peer over the top of the barricade again, two seemingly levitating energy swords have deployed and glow, steaming, hovering in the hands of their cloaked owners. The morning light is breaking over the far mountain, the slight ground fog curling across the field.

“Lay down your arms and surrender yourself.”

 “Oh,” says Seattle. He sits back down behind the door. “ _Oh,_ it’s a trap.” He laughs. You watch him and he shells the spent mag from his assault rifle and slaps in another. “Oh my god, this whole fucking compound baited bullshit is a trap. _For you._ That’s fucking hilarious.”

 _‘???’_ you send, via HUD uplink.

 “No, see, it’s funny. They’ve got thirty Grunts and Jackals, six Storm Elites and a very valuable Covenant military asset sitting here in the open with a Sangheili Spec Ops squad and they’re all fucking _here_ instead of on the other side of the world because they figured out the they send _you_ whenever something needs destroying.” His visor tints again. “I’m just saying you should be proud, jackass, not that I like your shitty plan.”

You toss Seattle the remote detonator.

“Fuck you.” He doesn’t let go of the detonator though – a black plastic handle with a push-button switch at the top. He shoves the detonator into his belt and digs something out of a satchel strapped to his thigh, tosses it to you. “EMP, short burst, thirty meter range. Should take their shields and cloaking down if you can get close. I put half a mag into one of them and it didn’t even bring his shields down so EMP first, then light them up. Good?”

“Good.”

“Okay so – no, wait, Short Change, no!”

But you’re already walking out from behind cover, EMP in one hand, and throw your empty battle rifle to the ground where they can see it. (Your magnum still on a mag-strip at your lower back.) The Sangheili are completely cloaked, far beyond anything you’ve encountered before, not even the usual level of motion distortion of common camo. There is a blur, a series of slight warping in the air. The two energy swords obviously mark the position of their advance pair – the blades bleeding blueish energy like radioactive smoke.

“Good,” says one of them. The faint blur in the middle, you decide. That’s their leader. Focus on him. “You know when your time is at an end, human.”

Say nothing. Keep walking toward them, then start _sprinting_ toward them. Then you’re fucking blitzing toward them like a mag-train and, SPARTAN, you _hurl_ the EMP at 100mph at them and it goes off in an electric burst of blue and yellow. It skips over your armor without even a blip (yours was designed against EMP) and suddenly their cloaking is gone and your magnum is out. You put a bullet into one gator’s visor, blow blood out the front of the glass. Put another bullet into the un-armored throat of the nearest sword wielder. Two down. A following six bullets you fire into their CO’s face, slugs slamming a trail across the silver shell of his helmet, just missing the narrow, fragile slot of his visor.

It’s fine.

You snatch up the sword from the one choking on his own blood and barrel in swinging. You can see them now – heavily armored, skinned with chrome, and they move fast. Incredibly fast. Two down and the leader snarls, “TAKE HIM,” and four of them charge you. The fastest one gets to you first. Feint left, SPARTAN. Duck his sword, swing your own in a streak of neon and heat. He jumps back and – you surprise him by pulling a second pistol from the mag strip on your thigh and shooting him three times in the throat.

Three down.

You unload round after round at the other three Sangheili until the magazine is empty and they’re too close to use the gun for anything but pistol-whipping the butt into their faces, shattering one Elite’s visor and blinding him. He reels back, eyes full of glass and – _Finish this. Finish it now. –_ you slam the energy sword through his shoulder to the hilt. The scream that follows makes your whole body burn with satisfaction. His death throes, however, rip the sword from your grip and that’s how the last two grab you.

Claws clamps closed on your shoulder. You slam your elbow back into the Covvie’s face, miss his visor, dent the metal. He grabs your arm at the wrist, twists your arm until something dislocates in your shoulder. Ignore it. Try to put a standard ka-bar knife through his armor – have it snap off at the hilt. Then his partner is in your face. He snatches you by the throat like a rag-doll and it’s over. He punches you in the gut – over and over, slams his knee between your legs into your pelvic armor. Hurts. He claws you, can’t get through your undersuit.

His fist around your neck is huge and he drags you into the air, throttling you while the other one pins yours arms and – No. You ax kick him in the chest, your foot slamming into the Covvie’s sternum. No effect. He grabs your ankle, snarls when you try to torque your foot from his grip.

“Animal.” His grip on your throat closes your airway completely. “You will whine for death before we give it to you.” He lets go of your ankle, pulls an energy blade from his hip and activates it – the glow lighting up curves of blue and chrome on the alien’s armor. He sets the blade against the side of your helmet where it immediately begins to scorch the armor. “When we _flay_ you from your combat-skin.”

The sword drags through your helmet. It slices through your visor like a heat knife through plastic and your HUD instantly shorts out. The blade penetrates your helmet, is inside the visor, blinding you with light. And then it’s just blinding you; the heat scorches your face and then the blade’s edge finds your skin. It splits and sears the flesh beneath your left eye, across the bridge of your nose, into your opposite cheekbone. You _do not scream._ You writhe and thrash until the blade is gone and you still _have not screamed._ Your helmet is full of blood now. It’s in your eyes, melted polymer fumes in your eyes, blood in your eyes, heat and the smell of your own burnt skin.

The Sangheili throw you to the ground, blinded, and kick you wherever you’re unarmored. You're alone. You're down and you're alone. They kick you until something in your rib cage gives. One of them – the one who cut your helmet – he cuts you again, slashes your under-suit open at the flank, your elbow, your knee, wherever the armor does not block. It slits you open, but cauterizes the wound. Don’t scream. Hear and remember, forever, the sound of the blade slices through your bodysuit, your skin.  A blow to the head throws you on your back, stunned, and they pin your arms into the grass, a fist clamping down around your throat. 

“Pull his arm out, lay it flat. I’ll skin the hand that struck down our brothers.”

You feel your arm pinned, straight out from your body, feel the heat of the blade again against your inner arm. You think this was their objective: to take you alive. Begin to scheme your suicide. Imagine how to make them kill you quickly. Make that your new goal, your sole focus: _Kill me. Kill me, you fucks._ The blade slides through your gauntlet, slices into the meat of your inner arm. Swallow your scream as the pain rips up from your wrist, turns your limb into river of fire, hope he hits a main artery, pray he severs something vital inside you.

“Idiot!” The blade is gone from your wrist. You still can’t see, but you feel the commander strike the one on top of you. “We take their weapon alive.”

“The demons can survive much worse.”

Try to open your eyes – through the scorched ruin of your visor, see them moving over you, just in time for the commander to reach down and grab the top of your chest armor, yank you off the ground and haul you into the air. His other hand closes around your neck. Grasp at his wrist, fight to breathe. You’re losing consciousness. Your HUD is sparking, flickering, beeping in your ear and informing you in the broken tones of the emergency bio-metrics that you’re hurt. Badly. Your armor is trying to go into lock, but you’re not quite fucked up enough. You don’t want it to lock. You don’t want to be paralyzed while the Covenant black ops cut you into the smallest parts you can be and still live.   

You wonder why Seattle hasn’t blown the compound yet.

He wouldn’t let you die for nothing…

The compound explodes. The shock wave throws everyone to the ground, deafens you but for the dampeners on your helmet, leaves you on the ground with the grass poking through the hole in your visor, blood splattered on your HUD. You hear the report of a battle rifle, see the mushroom cloud of ionized blue, half a mile tall and lighting the whole field in a bright blue glow. You hear the battle rifle.

A Sangheili screams, then abruptly stops.

“Fuck you!” someone shouts in clear Earther-classic English. “Fuck you, you hinge-head zealot fucks!”

Seattle.

You push yourself up onto your hands and knees. Seattle is facing down the two remaining Elites – all standing a chest, head, and shoulders taller than him – with his battle rifle. They have their swords out, are closing in on him. There is a piece of metal in the grass by your head, SPARTAN, there is the blade of your broken combat knife. Pick it up. Pick it up and stagger up.

“We will rip you limb from limb,” one of them is saying.

Seattle shoots him, but the bullets ricochet so he mouths off instead.

“Fuck you. We fucking win, asshole. Even if you kill us, we win.”

“We are taking your comrade. You will die here.”

Seattle laughs. “No. I’m too pretty to die.”

And because Seattle is talking, they don’t hear you until you grab the commander by the jaw, yanks his head back, and rip the serrated edge of your ka-bar across his throat. Blue blood sprays, the body drops, Seattle opens fire on the last Sangheili. This time, he doesn’t miss the visor.

“Short Change.”

Your palms are glowing, the bio-luminous blood on your gloves still hazy blue.

“Short Change, are you –? Fuck!”

Your knees hit the ground, then your shoulder. You fall – 1000 pounds of armor and blood and bone and sinew and nerves and you hit the ground and lie there beneath the neon blue sky. Roll onto your back. The light from the explosion shines through your broken visor. Seattle kneels next to you and finally fully takes stock of your injuries. Yanks his helmet off so you can see the panic, the way his eyes move over your body, fix on the wounds and measure their severity.

“Hey, you’re fine,” he says. “You’re fine. These are all cauterized. You’re good.”

Seattle pulls your ruined helmet off, lets it roll in the grass, fumbles with a can of bio-foam and a coagulant. “You’re fine,” he says, again, wiping the blood from your eyes. He sprays a thin line of bio-foam into the seared gash across your nose and cheekbones, gives you an injection for the pain. Starts applying bio-foam to the rest of your body, the innumerable gashes that he assured you were cauterized, but must still be bleeding. “Short Change,” he says, shaking you. “You’re good, buddy. You’re good. Just stay awake.” It’s hard to stay awake. “Hey! Look at me. Stay awake. I’ve called for evac, okay?”

Evac is two hours out.

They have to air-lift you and Command has you recalled to a medical facility off world. The last time you see Seattle, he’s standing at the mouth of the Pelican as the medical team tells him to get out. You hear him say, “ _But where are you taking him?”_ and _“Is there anything I can do?”_ and, when they finally push him off the Pelican loading ramp, _“When he wakes up, tell him we won, okay? We won.”_


	4. Director

 

Wake up.

You’re strapped down, blinded, and someone has their hand over your mouth, over the oxygen mask over your mouth, holding it in place and they say, _“Calm down! You’re fine. Calm down, you’re okay now. You won. Hear me? You won.”_ That part is important, actually, because what he means is that Circumstance did not fall to the final assault and what he means is the battle there is over. Don’t stay conscious long, only long enough to feel someone hand on your forehead saying, _“You’re fine. Relax. You’re fine…”_

Just long enough to see Seattle in the window of your memory – his body framed against the back of the Pelican, the artillery fire lighting up the skies behind him, making your friend a shadow against the bombings.

Accept that is the last you will ever see of him and fall back into unconsciousness.

Dream that you’re still on Circumstance, tequila and blood on your tongue.

Sleep.

***

Wake up again.

This time the quiet deafens you. Wake to the sound of your heartbeat on the EKG machine and the cool press of medical ward bed sheets beneath your fingers, tucked under your arms, drawn up to your stomach. Breathe. Then acknowledge that there is a man in a blue suit sitting in a chair near the end of your medical cot. He’s sipping a bottle of water and reading something on his datapad and it’s not until you sit up and start pulling your oxygen mask off that he notices you’re awake.

 “How are you feeling, Caleb?”

_“Don’t call me that.”_

Your immediate hostility doesn’t seem to perturb the man, who bows his head once in apology. “Forgive me my manners, SPARTAN-000. It’s been a long day. You may call me Counselor, for now. I am here in that capacity.”

This tells you everything you need to know about this man: He knows who you are, what you’ve been doing, and who you’ve been which means he is cleared at Level Zero and here, likely, as your new handler for whatever comes next. This is likely why he is alone in the recovery room with you and the door is closed. It takes you a moment longer to realize that you recognize his voice. Realize he was an observer, once, behind the glass of your iso room two years ago.

“The medical staff,” says the man, folding his hands in his lap, “are confident you’ll make a full recovery and will be released to active duty again within the week. Impressive. Your injuries would have proved fatal to any regular soldier and SPARTANs have died for significantly less I am told.” His smile is white. “I am here to thank you for your work on and to inform you that Soloman-069 received a commendation and half a dozen awards for his bravery during the conflict on Circumstance.”

He caps his water bottle, sets it aside.

“I am also here with a proposition for you, Zero. It’s a proposition that was originally discussed a year and a half ago when you were reactivated as a military asset. At the time of your recovery, you were put on a short list for a second program in ONI-III and now that the term of your service in the field has reached a lull, a decision has been made to pull you from solo deployment and re-assign you to research and Special Projects.”

Dread is a coil of wire around the muscle of your heart, garroting quietly tighter.

“No.” You say it softly.

The Counselor tilts his head. “No?”

“I can fight.”

“I know,” says the man mildly. “That’s why I am here. Your unique position has made you an ideal candidate for another special weapon and operation program. You may or may not have heard of Project Freelancer.” He gauges your slight lift of eyebrows correctly. “Ah, then you have. Whatever you’ve heard is likely inaccurate to the extreme, but to put it plainly: Project Freelancer is branch of Special Operations, a sister project to the SPARTAN II program specializing in the development and deployment of experimental military hardware.”

You know where this is going before he says it, but he says it anyway.

“I am here to recruit you, SPARTAN. Your previous military usefulness has come to an end. They will no longer be deploying you under active SPARTAN service tags and you will not be assigned to regular military operations again for the foreseeable future.”

He gestures slightly.

“The notion of SPARTANs and their presence bringing up ‘morale’ has been discarded. We require your skill-set for more quantifiable objectives and, to be clear, those objectives have nothing to do with your… unique physiology, SPARTAN-000.” He lowers his head slightly. “We require only your significant martial talents in this instance. If you accept, you will be assigned to a Freelancer squad for combat deployment. Does that sound like a reasonable assignment, soldier?”

Say nothing.

He tilts his head. “It took a sizable portion of the Director’s influence to allow me access to you, SPARTAN-000. You see, we are the only Project interested in your military experience. I assure you your original overseers have no interest in what you can _do_ only in what you are. The experimental aspect of our program is almost entirely weaponry and armor advancement. You won’t find yourself facing…”He ponders a word. “… _invasive_ procedures. If you do not wish to join then you will be reassigned back to the SPARTAN-II sub-programs and research division.”

Lean forward. Speak through your teeth. Say, _“You can’t.”_

“It is not in my hands. SPARTAN assignment is not my purview until one is assigned to Special Projects. Like yourself. The decision has already been made. I am simply giving you an option as to which project you are assigned.”

“No. You’re not.”

He studies you.

“No,” he says at last, abandoning his pretenses. “I am not. You’re right. This is not a choice, however I may frame it to be such. This is a question, one question. That’s all.” He folds his hands in his lap. “Do you want to be a soldier or do you want to be project?” You catch yourself before you growl at him. His tone remains infinitely calm. “I will give you a moment to gather your thoughts.”

 _“_ Don’t need it.”

The Counselor stands, gathering his things to go. He regards you with a small bow of his head. “I didn’t think that you would,” he says. “Report to the hanger bay three at 1400. You’ve been discharged from this facility and into my keeping. I’ll be taking you to our off-site facility to be evaluated. Do you have any questions at this time?” When you do not rise to his bait – how he assumed your answer and your choice – he simply bows. “Very well then. I will see you in an hour.” At the door, before he leave, the man adds, “The Director will be pleased to meet you finally.”

 

***

You shouldn’t be thinking about Seattle but you are.

You’re preoccupied with the last you saw of him -- the light of the MAC canon slugs hitting atmo in the sky behind him, how the backdraft off the other Pelican drop ships beat his blond hair flat against his head. You are distracted by the notion of his death – if it happened, how it happened, that it went unwitnessed. Allow his imaginary but likely death to put down roots in your soul. Sadness does not live in the heart. Dread breeds in your blood.

Tell yourself Seattle is too tough to die and focus.

The Director is not looking at you. The ship they’ve brought you to is a Charon-class light frigate, the _Mother of Invention_ , and the bridge is lit by the earth-glow off the planet below – the alien continents shining up through the massive viewing panels that make up the nose of the ship. You’re watching the slow orbit of the world and the Director is inspecting the unraveling sheet of holo-light data on the center console before him. He’s a tall man with an accent you can’t identify, greying slightly at the temples. He’s been ignoring you for about two minutes.

“I have a question for you, SPARTAN.” He looks at you finally. “And I want you to answer honestly.”

 “ _Yeah,”_ says a voice from somewhere among the war room’s many holo-nodes. “ _And I’ll know if you’re lying, man, I’m watching you, buddy.”_

“Log off, Alpha.”

_“Psssh, fine.”_

The Director waits from some unseen signal that the AI is gone, then asks his question: “How many lives have you saved?”

His eyes, pale green – eerily so, like bad gene-augments or splicer mods – have the kind of weight and comprehension that makes you uncomfortable. It’s the way you’ve been taught to look at most things: with the intention of taking it apart completely. His question arrests you somewhat because it’s been two years now of fighting and two years of atmospheres lit by burning fleets and streets thick with corpses. What is two years at war? How many lives have you saved?

You’re still wondering if Seattle is alive.

“I don’t know,” you say.

The Counselor watching your response from the far side of the room, standing back from the central holo-display platform. You are aware of his position in relation to you at all times. Admit, SPARTAN, there is a part of you, a constant slow-burn chunk of your anatomy, that hates him exclusively because he asked you, _“Do you want to be a soldier or do you want to be a project?”_

The Director remains where he is, leaning against the edge of the console, the blue and white grid glowing gently between you.

“To save lives, a great number of lives, could you give you own life?”

“Yes.”

“Could you kill other humans?”

Consider the question. “Yes.”

“Have you ended human lives before?”

Hesitate, then: “No.”

The Director does not nod, does not blink, does not react in any way to this confession or what it means about you. A: “Could you? If ordered? If it was asked of you?”

“Yes.”

“Would you hesitate?”

“I don’t know.”

 “I will ask you end human lives, SPARTAN. It may not shock you to know that your kind was never built for war with the Covenant and you are more than capable of war against humanity, but that is not how they have taught you –”

“Can’t teach war,” you say, interrupting him.

His eyes flicker. “Can’t they?”

“No,” you say. “They can’t.”

“Then is it your opinion that what you know of war will not cause you to hesitate? Will you be able to take the lives of our enemies regardless of their species, SPARTAN?” His gaze is unreadable to you. “Would you be able to kill your own teammates if ordered?”

Stare.

When the Director shows no signs of elaborating, you say: “I’m an assassin?”

“No. But some of your teammates will be. Answer the question.”

Don’t answer the question. You think of Seattle.

Think of him saying, _“I’m too good looking to die,”_ his rifle tucked against his shoulder. Imagine his grin. He laughs, hands you the tequila bottle that tastes like his mouth and he’s walking away from you holding that little girl in his arms, a kitten on his shoulder and he’s standing in the back of the Pelican with blood on his armor and the sky burning behind him and you --

Imagine him dying. Design the bullet that kills him, then load the gun and use it to blow his head open. Watch him die in the dirt, sunshine glinting gold in the blood as is spreads beneath the body, the contents of his skull spilled out beneath the clear blue sky. Don’t answer the question.

“Do not mistake me, SPARTAN.” The Director’s stare deconstructs you like a weapon, like a mechanism. Believe that he would take you apart to understand you if he could. He says, “My objective is not the needless spending of lives, I have not built and dedicated my life to this program or the UNSC to watch soldiers die for wasted reasons -- in the name of stupidity, arrogance, and fear. Am not your piss-poor unit CO digging through Covenant slag heaps for intell. If I spend the lives of my operatives it is only in the name of saving countless many more.”

His gaze has a physical weight.

“Understand that I am looking for soldiers who understand the cost of _survival_ is exorbitantly high. I am in the business of getting _results_ so, again: Are you capable of doing what is necessary to ensure the survival of your species or aren’t you?”

Think of Seattle in the back of the Pelican.

“Answer me, SPARTAN. Are you or aren’t you?”

 “Yes, sir.” you say. “I am.”

***

The name they give you is Maine. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. The other chapters will follow soon. Just need to proofread and cry on them a bit more. Any feedback on this story is much appreciated and nothing is better than letting know which line or part in particular made you smile... or scream in rage and discontent. Both of those things are super helpful and feel free to shout at me whenever.


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